SEMINAR: Seminar - Knowledge distribution and protection in low trust value creation networks - An engineering perspective

Companies designing and manufacturing industrial goods readily share their knowledge in order to benefit from low-cost wages and available manufacturing and designing capacities of partner companies within their value creation networks and beyond. Yet, with the possibility of saving money in the short term comes the risk of providing sourcing partners with the knowledge they need to reproduce unique features of the original products. This dilemma makes decisions on knowledge sharing difficult. Scientific contributions on the issue mainly propose 'threat scenarios' caused by counterfeiting and 'opportunities' through globalized sourcing, and do not focus on the knowledge transfer aspect. Still, there is little detailed understanding of knowledge transfer situations and of their whys and wherefores, especially for engineering knowledge. In this seminar I present results of an interview study within seven German industrial goods companies providing a first insight into motivations of different stakeholders, different types of transferred knowledge, means of knowledge distribution and protection, and possibly unaware consequences of knowledge transfer for the knowledge distributing company.